Bracewell wants less slogging

Already guaranteed a spot in the Super 8 stage of the tournament, NZ coach John Bracewell wants his team to practice rotating the strike in today’s match against Canada.

“We want to demonstrate fearlessness in our confidence. But we don’t just want to turn it into a slog-fest. We have got to have more balls we are scoring off,” he said.

“It is always nice to see someone get a hundred and we want to nail one of those but I liked the intelligence with which we went about our batting and the assessment and adjustment that we have done from game to game.”

New Zealand have become renowned for their big hitting which was on display throughout the Chappell-Hadlee tournament in New Zealand and the opening games of the World Cup in which they beat England by six wickets and Kenya by 148 runs.

Bracewell also defended the use of the rotation system that the Black Caps have been using since the start of the year, saying injuries were inevitable due to the length of World Cup and all squad members would need to be ready to step up if called upon.

“We need to make sure that every one of our 15 is ready to play,” he said.

“Once we get into the Super 8 and we start to travel, play, travel, play, injuries will occur.

“We’ve worked on our squad mentality right from the start. We were trying to work on a 15, knowing our history of injuries.”